Stepping Stones
by CalltheWarden
Summary: How they are to how they will be  50 prompts. Semi-Au


**Obviously I'm not dead. Semi-Au. Have fun and review if you feel inclined. Kayla**

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><p><strong>Title<strong>

He loves that she came up with her own little title, a nickname really, for him. It's "Kolya' -the Russian version of Nick. He just wishes it hadn't happened because of her obsession with Tolstoy.

**Carve**

Lucy never commented on the fact that by her window- in neat, cramped script- is a carved "Sleep peacefully. With all my love, Kolya". She just runs her hand over it every night for guaranteed sweet dreams.

**Russia**

Lucy had been acting oddly distant, and he finally knew why. She was asleep when Nick came across the application to study abroad in Russia for all of her upcoming senior year.

**Responsible**

Nick is the responsible one. So he makes damn sure that he finishes the application in plenty of time to mail it in early. He'll never admit how badly his hands were shaking.

**Selfish **

Lucy feels her most selfish when she gets an acceptance letter for an application that she did not have the courage or honesty to complete herself.

**Sin**

Nick is worried that Lucy will hold his invasion of privacy against him- a major sin in her eyes- against him for the rest of their lives.

**Mystery**

For the first time in a long time they are a mystery to each other. But both of them are curious, and are willing to rediscover each other as long as they have to.

**Flight**

Lucy tries to find a way to miss her flight because there is no way she'll be able to catch another one in time for the mandatory orientation.

**Wait**

Nick makes that plan impossible, as usual. He hates having to wait, but he hates running even slightly late more.

**Coffee**

Their last kiss for the foreseeable future is a mixture of mint toothpaste(his), cinnamon latte(hers), Pasha de Cartier aftershave(his), and the constant cherry bubblegum & pepper

**Darwin**

According to Darwin and his theory of evolution, Nick doesn't have any real need for coffee nowadays. That doesn't stop him from drinking a latte daily for a month to recall what it tasted like on her lips.

**Pillow**

She spends half of her nights in Russia punching her pillow, and getting annoyed that her preferred pillow- all 6'2, dark hair, and baby blue eyes of him- is 5 thousand miles away.

**Photo**

Nick finally feels something other that abandoned when he realizes that Lucy stole his picture- frame and all- and took it to Russia. He's less P.O.'d when he sees that she left behind his new favorite photo- a shot of him and Lucy tangled up in the tree house.

**Charm**

She feels as guilty as Judas when Nick admits- after a week of badgering- that he's had trouble sleeping with out her being in the house. She drops it for few day s without any warning. A week later Nick gets a set of cds in the mail- they're of Lucy talking, singing, just banging around the kitchen with her host sisters, and anything else she can think of.

He tells her that it's his new good luck charm- at least until she is back where she belongs

**Basket**

He does love her in all her crazy, wild chaos, but sending him a text/email/call/tweet

/facebook message every 4.2 minutes is ridiculous. He tells her she'd feel better about her midterms if she studied instead of submitting him to her basket-case antics. To cheer her up (and apologize yet again) he sends her a basket of her favorite chocolates. He's just thankful that he has 2 continents and several time zones between him and a normally-crazy-but-scarily-so-when-on-massive-amounts-of-sugar-like-chocolate Lucy.

**Presents**

Lucy will send him presents when she finds something that catches her eye. He loves the presents almost as he loves the stories that accompany them. His personal favorite involves Lucy, an old cabby, and her inability to read Russian street signs.

**Chess**

It takes 2 weeks and 5 overwhelming defeats before Nick remembers that Lucy talked her chess club president host sister into teaching her how to play.

**Loud**

Lucy is playing her drums loud enough to raise hell because of a photo. It's a shot of Nick with a slim, pretty redheaded vampire on the Raktapa council. But she's playing so loud because Ginger looks like she belongs with Nick, in a way that Lucy can't.

**Ink**

Lucy is supposed to wait- for parental approval and Nick's accompaniment- but she's tired of being left behind. So on a brisk spring day with no witnesses Lucy goes into a small, nondescript building clean, and comes out with ink still seeping into her skin.

**Slow**

Nick is slow to get angry, but seeing Lucy's tattoo through a forwarded text is enough to make him snap. He shots her a cruel text, and sits down with a bottle, & its slow burn.

**Cry**

She had sworn ot herself that no guy would ever make her cry. She vowed that she wouldn't let herself be hurt. Years ago, when she still believed that love and hate were exclusive, she vowed to make Nick's life hell. She summoned a bitter laugh as she took another look at the text he sent through the tears she never meant to cry over him.

**Funeral**

They don't talk for a month, and meet with each other by accident at Des's private funeral. They're both devastated by the loss of a mentor(journalism, his) & godfather(maternal, hers). He doesn't know what to say and she knows that words won't help now. So she slips her arms around him, & ignores the "rain" that soaks her alone.

**Sleep**

They haven't left Madrid, and its graveyard, after 2 weeks. But sleep has left them both.

**Mother**

He gets reamed out when he does eventually go back. Nick never finds out that Lucy calls Helena while he's in the air. She knows Helena is only so angry because she loves her son and wants to protect him. She never says how jealous that makes her.

**Wolves**

Nick manages a smile at the rumors about his absence- howling with wolves? Really?

**Closet**

She misses him now that he's back home, but she's not too homesick. After all, in the back of her closet is an old baseball shirt of his that she stole. It looks better on her.

**Name**

Hearing Nick call out "Lucky" at the airport is the only time she likes her given name.

**Jeans**

He had left the shirt willingly, but he didn't remember leaving his favorite Levi's with her. Nick is all for theft, however, when he sees her butt in his old jeans. Damn.

**Prom **

Lucy refuses to let Nick take her to the prom. She does ,however, kiss him frequently while they dance in her yard. She doesn't object to all school traditions after all.

**Exchange**

They make deal after deal the summer that Lucy comes home from Russia. His family wonders about their sanity, Nick & Lucy know they need to do this to be happy- it's a simple equivalent exchange. Four years with out each other to go to college and start their careers in order to avoid the what-ifs plaguing them for years to come.

**Stress**

Getting Nick ready to return to Nadrid, and its legendary university, is twice as stressful as getting Lucy out to UCLA. Regardless, neither of their homes is a very calm, Zen place for several weeks- not that they ever were. They're going to miss the chaos.

**Aim**

The argument over who has better aim is pointless, even for the most temperamental couple in the West. But where they're going no one is going to know why it's important.

**Trinket**

The pink and yellow pen isn't something he would have chosen, but Lucy had handed the trinket to him at his gate so he could finish paperwork. He just forgot to give it back.

**Teen**

It's two years later and Nick still has the ability to piss her off- this time with a thoughtless comment about this being her last day as a teen, and her getting older

**Cupcake**

He's not laughing when she shoves a cupcake into face in a fit of pique. Not at all.

**Cookie**

Nor is she, when he grinds a cookie down the back of her shirt in retaliation.

**Hair**

She finds the scar when she helps him get the pancake batter out of his hair. She knows the who and how instantly (her, a lego ship at 20 mph) and feels guilt cover her like the batter covers him. His crooked grin, & request that she kiss it better, make both feel OK.

**Honey**

He starts calling her "Honey" constantly when he finds out how much she spends on it.

**Insult**

Neither was acting particularly sweet as they wandered the streets of Barcelona, completely lost. The locals found out that "honey" & "baby" were really insults.

**Throne**

The insults are redirected when they're called back to Violet Hill, and have to spend a day stuck in the deserted caves. Lucy is using the throne as a backrest while working on her music engineering thesis. Nick flopped into the seat and tried to figure out why her thesis needed 7 versions of Lucy Hamilton-Drake. But it made him reach for the box.

**Pill**

They were supposed to go to a new art gallery being opened by a mutual friend. Lucy and the headache from Hell and failed to see her "Tylenol" was really an "Ambien".

**Text**

Every single time Nick checked his phone he had a new test from his family.

_Dad- You do have the ring, right? Sebastian- She'll obviously say yes. _

_Mom- I KNEW she would be my daughter-in-law one day!_

_Marcus- make sure you take pics. Connor- You will be fine. She is going to be happy._

_Hyacinth- It's been far too long since the last wedding in the family. _

_Logan- She's family already. Quinn- you guys love each & will be obnoxiously happy._

_Geoffrey- ask by a chair: her heart rate will be quite high. Mazel Tov._

_Solange- she may be your wife soon, but she's still my best friend. Be good to her._

**Chocolate**

He should have realized something was wrong when she turned down chocolate. Very wrong when the Coldplay in the background didn't merit a scathing comment.

**Motivation**

Though both of them needed champagne for motivation, they chose to leave that part out.

**Lacrosse**

The announcement let Nick's old lacrosse teammates settle a bet that started in freshman year, and had become worth over three thousand dollars.

**Lasso**

Getting all of his brothers as groomsmen was difficult, but Nick was good with a lasso.

**Deed**

The threats that they would elope were uttered at least once a night, but the deed was done in front of all 400 guests according to their plans.

**Power**

"That is so wrong!" "Lucy, darling, what is so wrong with Duncan flirting- and with a real, live girl no less?" "Don't darling me, Logan, and it's wrong because that is my brother-in-law flirting with my SISTER!" "Change a few words and it's you and Nick all over again." Nick isn't the only Drake who can leave Lucy speechless.

**Tribe **

The couple's wedding was voted "Most romantic", "Most fun", and "Most drunken debauchery" by the _Inter-Tribe Weekly Bulletin._ They were so proud about that.

**Love**

They vowed to love until death do they part, but both knew it would be much longer.


End file.
